Back at Shonen Jump Championship San Francisco, I had the chance to meet with many of the excellent members of Seattle-based Team Fusion. Packed with a bevy of star forces—including SJC powerhouses Kevin Wang and Robert Lim (along with Austin Kulman, the most adorable national champion in the history of the game)—Team Fusion turned out to be an awesome group of individuals. While playing with them in a few practice games, Mr. Wang and Mr. Lim mentioned an intriguing concept that one of their local store-mates had concocted.

Creating Advantage Through the TFMagic Concept

A balanced duelist learns to realize the importance of card advantage without sacrificing other goals such as field presence and life points. No card is more indicative of the circa-2005 death trap fallacy of “card advantage is everything” than Ojamagic. After all, it is not just a simple two-for-one like Pot of Greed or Pot of Avarice. No, no, no, it’s a three-for-one! Best card ever, right?

No! It’s not! The three cards that you net from its rather situational effect are normal monsters that provide no battle damage, no stable field presence, and no utility whatsoever! So why is Team Fusion presenting the idea of an Ojamagic-based deck? The answer is Snipe Hunter! The spicy new monster from Cyberdark Impact creates a truly frightening interaction with Ojamagic. In one turn, you can conceivably destroy the opponent’s entire field. Discard the spell card, get three more Ojama monsters to have your way with, and life is spicy good fun!

Let’s get to work building a deck around this wonderful combination.

Build: TFMagic

General Synergies and Goals:

1) Draw and play Snipe Hunter.

2) Use Ojamagic with its effect.

3) Rinse and repeat.

Pivotal Cards:

1) Snipe Hunter

2) Ojamagic

Constructing the Monster Lineup of the TFMagic Concept

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that playing too many copies of the Ojama monsters can lead to a swift demise. Drawing multiple copies of vanilla 0/1000 monsters is bad, and the good Ojamagic deck would be wise to avoid too many. Let’s separate this list into the Ojama monsters, the Snipe support, and general support.

Ojama Monsters:

2 Ojama Black

2 Ojama Green

2 Ojama Yellow

Two copies of each seems optimal. Playing any more than that could get quite disgusting.

Snipe Support:

3 Snipe Hunter

1 Sangan

1 Treeborn Frog

3 Thunder Dragon

2 Mystic Tomato

1 Spirit Reaper

This is the engine that we’ll use to bring Snipe Hunter to the field. Using three copies of the card along with two copies of Mystic Tomato should have one on call no matter the situation. Three copies of Thunder Dragon along with the contingent of Sangan, Treeborn Frog, and Night Assailant should provide plenty of discard fodder as well.

General Support:

1 Dark Magician of Chaos

2 Freed the Brave Wanderer

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Morphing Jar

2 Zaborg the Thunder Monarch

1 Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch

2 Cyber Dragon

The different monsters in this group provide solid support for the field as well. You can discard most of the tribute monsters to Snipe Hunter, and they’re also great set-ups if you want to set an Ojama monster for a turn and try to keep it alive. Freed works wonderfully with all of the different Light monsters in the deck.

27 monsters is an all-time high for any of my decks and for New Grounds as well! However, with all of the deck-thinning present in the build, the high count should not be a problem.

The Spell and Trap Support for the TFMagic Concept

This is a special deck, so special consideration must be made when thinking of the different “staples.” We’re going to remove Nobleman of Crossout and Mystical Space Typhoon from the equation. They provide two functions (face-down monster removal and spell or trap removal) that are easily accounted for by the Snipe Hunter engine. We’ll stick with

Premature Burial

Graceful Charity

Confiscation

Heavy Storm

Of these four, Confiscation is the only questionable choice. However, I feel pulling off those huge Morphing Jar combinations is important enough to warrant getting into the opponent’s hand for some inside information. Let’s move on to the themed spells.

DISCLAIMER: I had numerous ideas for different combinations involving the Ojama monsters, including Ojama Delta Hurricane, Heart of the Underdog, Dark Factory of Mass Production, and others. However, I’m quite happy with the eventual selections for both the themed spell and trap framework. You can flavor your own build with different additions though!

Conceptual Spell Support:

1 Pot of Avarice: I realize that running this spell card with two copies of Freed is usually ill-advised. However, the utility of sending Ojama monsters back to the deck with the hope of using an Ojamagic again is too good to ignore. All of the different cards that help us send monsters to the graveyard support Avarice quite well.

1 Card Destruction: When you have Thunder Dragon, Ojamagic, Dark Magician of Chaos, and numerous useless Ojama monsters in hand, Card Destruction becomes one of the best cards in the deck.

1 Scapegoat: Intended purely to slow the game down, Scapegoat should afford you a few turns to build cards in hand for the mid-game push.

1 Swords of Revealing Light: The inclusion of Swords follows the same logic behind the Scapegoat choice. Slowing a game down, which leads to multiple sets of backfield and monsters for the opponent, is the optimal situation for Snipe Hunter to appear.

3 Ojamagic: I want to get rid of these spell cards as soon as possible. As much as I’m tempted to play only two copies in this build, three seems necessary to use it whenever possible.

Let’s take a look at the traps we’ll be using in this build, starting with the usual suspects.

Call of the Haunted

Mirror Force

Ring of Destruction

Torrential Tribute

Conceptual Trap Support:

1 Ultimate Offering: In conjunction with our Ojama monsters and tribute monsters, Ultimate Offering will definitely scare the opponent. Imagine setting four monsters in one turn, bluffing the opponent by making him or her fear your Ojama force! You can also tribute for a monster like Dark Magician of Chaos in one turn, converting all of your Ojama monsters into lasting field presence.

2 Bottomless Trap Hole: These are thrown in strictly to protect your Snipe Hunter cards. Since 1500 ATK gets over most of the commonly played monsters in the environment, BTH should cut out the Breaker and Cyber Dragon cards that your opponent tries to throw at you.

Expected Matchups with the Best Decks in the Format

After the members of Team Fusion introduced me to the concept, I must say it tickled my fancy. The final build I’ve produced has a number of distinguishing factors. First, I’ve never built a 45-card deck for any theme. However, it seems to fit here with all of the thinning and the propensity for terrible draws. Also, many of the cards here are unique and central to this build, such as Ojamagic and Ultimate Offering. I’ve never truly had extensive experience with such synergetic support.

I have no idea how this deck would fare against the current cream of the crop. However, I assume that any sort of solid opening draw involving a Snipe Hunter, Graceful Charity, or Card Destruction with a copy of Ojamagic can turn the game in your favor in a hurry. The deck looks quite fun to play. Thanks to Team Fusion for their heads up on a unique, Seattle-pioneered archetype.